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The seventh Lord Lucan, by all reports, was a very boring man. That was the point I kept in my mind when I wrote Aiding and Abetting, a fictionalised account of Lucan's post-murderous wanderings. (To depict a boring person as such, without being boring, was, incidentally, quite difficult.)

I inquired of numerous people who had met him, at school, in the army, in later life: this boring factor was the most constant. He was also, even for those days, a musical snob. Approaching 40, he was simply not imaginative enough to take up a guitar-playing hippy identity. For these, and many other deeply psychological reasons, I think it extremely unlikely that Lucan would have had it in him to take up the life of a jungle hippy in Goa, as a new book, Dead Lucky, alleges. If he had, he would never have been able to resist expressing some uninhibited sentiments about his past. In that environment, he would have talked about his children to whom, in fact, Lucan had been very much attached.

I have not seen the book, and look forward to reading it. But, though physical resemblances are part of the argument, they are not enough. While I was doing research for my novel I received quite a few letters from people who were convinced that they had seen and talked to Lucan, but none of their descriptions fitted the psychological picture of the stupid gambler, occupation: aristocrat, deeply in debt, who dressed to kill, and did kill.

Even if he had not murdered the nanny by mistake and had achieved his aim of killing his wife, he would have been the first suspect. He was much too stupid to be able to take on a totally new identity. I feel that he simply got away and stayed abroad incognito.

A police officer involved in the case wrote to me a few years ago that he and many of his fellow officers believed Lucan to be still alive. In a subsequent TV programme his widow asserted that he had died of drink. Although in my novel I brought him to a stickier end, I think Lady Lucan is probably right. Muriel Spark

Savaged by the snark

The recently published ninth edition of the excellent Chambers Dictionary, which has always prided itself on keeping up with new words, gives only one meaning for the noun "snark". It's "an imaginary animal created by Lewis Carroll". The 10th edition might well carry a second meaning: "an adverse book review written with malice aforethought." If the dictionary were compiled on historical principles, like the Oxford English Dictionary, it might mention that the word "snark" was first used in this sense by Heidi Julavits in a long and fascinating article about book-reviewing which she published in the US magazine the Believer. Elsewhere in the literary forest, Tibor Fischer recently launched a savage attack on Martin Amis's Yellow Dog, describing it as "not-knowing-where-to-look bad"; Jonathan Myerson has written a scalding review of Douglas Kennedy's new novel A Special Relationship, while Dale Peck, writing in the New Republic, attempted to bury Rick Moody's novel The Black Veil under an avalanche of abuse. Generating a small but widely reported kerfuffle, this last event was one of the stimuli for Julavits's contention that the killingly personal review might be reaching such epidemic proportions that it needed its own monosyllabic name, like plague.

Plausibly claiming to have identified an industry-wide rise in the prevalence of a snide tone, she called such a review a "snark". Since the noun derives from the accepted slang adjective "snarky", one would have thought it a rather understated label for an attack whose intent is often not merely snide but outright murderous. Better acquainted with the concept of gangsterism in public life, the Germans call a killer review a rip-up and the Italians a tear-to-pieces. But this new, English word is probably violent enough, and it certainly captures the essential element of personally cherished malice.

The desire to do someone down, or indeed in, is the defining feature. Adverse book reviews there have always been, and probably always should be. At their best, they are written in defence of a value, and in the tacit hope that the author, having had his transgressions pointed out, might secretly agree that his book is indeed lousy. All they attack, or seem to attack, is the book. But a snark blatantly attacks the author. It isn't just meant to retard the author's career, it is meant to advance the reviewer's, either by proving how clever he is or simply by injuring a competitor.

Back in the early 19th-century, the dim but industrious poet Robert Montgomery had grown dangerously used to extravagant praise, until a new book of his poems was given for review to the great historian and reviewer Lord Macaulay. The results set all England laughing and Montgomery on the road to oblivion, where he still is, his fate at Macaulay's hands being his only remaining claim to fame.

Across the pond, Mark Twain later did the same to James Fenimore Cooper. Making hilarious game of the improbabilities in Cooper's tales of arcane woodcraft, Twain's essays about Cooper have been American classics ever since. So have Cooper's novels, but only in the category of enjoyable hokum. After Twain got through with him, Cooper's prestige was gone.

When you say a man writes badly, you are trying to hurt him. When you say it in words better than his, you have hurt him. It would be better to admit this fact, and admit that all adverse reviews are snarks to some degree, than to indulge the sentimental wish that malice might be debarred from the literary world. The literary world is where it belongs. When Dr Johnson longed for his enemy to publish a book, it was because he wasn't allowed to hit him with an axe. Civilisation tames human passions, but it can't eliminate them. Hunt the snark and you will find it everywhere. Clive James

Have a seat - I'm not dead yet

My family and I aren't actually dead, but it's an error a lot of people do make. Four years on, friends still have to field the occasional phone call from distant acquaintances expressing their shocked condolences for our collective demise. But although reports of our deaths have been greatly exaggerated, it's an understandable exaggeration to make, due to a particular bench in west London's somewhat grubby Holland Park, carved with an inscription that sounds more like the tolling of a death knell than its intended cheery announcement: "In celebration of the Freeman Family. Ron, Helen, Hadley and Nell. September 1999." That the bench squats next to the dog-walking path, a spot my mother excitedly proclaimed "absolutely perfect for us", is a fact my sister and I tend to gloss over.

Four years ago, my very American parents - never knowingly bypassing an opportunity to wax cheesy - proclaimed the year of 1999 a momentous one indeed for the Freeman family: it was my father's 60th birthday, my 21st, my sister's 20th and my parents' 25th anniversary. How could the world remain unaware of this great moment of chronological synchronicity?

Well, the world certainly has not - or at least the dog walkers of Holland Park have not - thanks to the bench, a gift from our neighbours (Americans, too, incidentally, or had you already guessed that?)

"It makes one wonder if you were all struck by lightning!" giggles Mrs Emma Reeves, "seventysomething", who took a rest last Friday during her daily constitutional by sitting contentedly against our names. "I often stop at this bench and wondered what happened to the Freeman family."

"I thought maybe the Freemans were all killed in a plane crash," offers Jessica Stephens thoughtfully. "Lockerbie, September 11, you know, something like that." "Or maybe a boating disaster?" I suggest, beginning to enjoy this morbid game, before remembering that - oh yes, that's right - we're not dead.

My sister and I have noticeably started to avoid Holland Park since the arrival of the bench, but clearly we are in a minority among those who feel qualms about having outdoor furniture dedicated to them. "We've actually run out of space for any more benches," says Graham Vincent, the park's grounds contract manager. "They've always been popular and last year we just ran out of benches for people to buy, so we had to stop them. Mind you," he adds, after an unnecessarily pointed pause, "most wait until the people are dead." Hadley Freeman

Spelling rebelz

Often in the past, reformers have proposed phonetic alternatives to the difficult, apparently arbitrary spellings of English. Usually they have been earnest scholars or radical intellectuals. Nowadays, however, the bards of rap and hip-hop have become the most powerful advocates of alternative systems of orthography. If you are going to be a rebel, then you had better rebel against "correct" spelling.

So the new single by Chingy, recently a big seller in the US, is called Right Thurr, a streetwise pronunciation of Right There (though perhaps with a hint of Somerset to the English ear). In the same vein, Christina Aguilera had a hit with "Dirrty" (those two "r"s trying hard to advertise the song's authenticity). Rs must indeed be grittily dirty letters: witness hip-hop singer Nelly's recent "Hot in Herre". (How do you pronounce "herre"?)

Look closely and you can distinguish between the singer who tries to represent demotic speech and the mere linguistic braggadocio. Dizzee Rascal's Mobo nominated album Boy in Da Corner scarcely has a conventionally spelled track title. I Luv U, Stop Dat, Hold Ya Mouf, Wot U On. Apart from the text-message U that has become ubiquitous (see Ms Dynamite song titles), these approximate to real pronunciations. But when you look at Chingy's Holidae In or Alicia Keys's Butterflyz you see rebels without much of a cause.

Possibly influenced by the 1991 film Boyz 'N the Hood, the big rebel letter has become z. It is there in the very names of some tough-sounding groups: Outlawz, Big Brovaz. And it elbows pallid, bourgeois "s" aside in many a title. Another Nelly composition is "Dem Boyz", while hard-faced urban combo NWA are responsible for titles such as Real Niggaz, Alwayz Into Something and A b***h Iz a b***h.

If such spellings should for a moment look cool, you ought to note that we have been here before, in defiantly uncool company. Remember Slade? They did this spelling insurrection 30 years ago. What about Coz I Luv You? Or Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me? And then there was that anthem of the inner city, Cum on Feel the Noize. Those Brummie rebelz! John Mullan

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